Be sure to bring plenty of business cards! This is a great way to exchange information with colleagues and vendors. Also, bring them with to conference events so you can register for door prizes!

Post about your conference experience on social media! Let others know how you are enjoying the conference and what you are learning using the hashtag #MALHM2018. Be sure to tag MALHM if posting on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. A Facebook event has been created that will also include information and updates as well.

Tuesday, April 24

Pre-Conference Event at Volstead House: We have a great pre-conference event planned in Granite Falls! A bus will be transporting those who have registered for this event from the Ramada Inn at 1 PM. Please arrive and check-in with Dustin in the hotel lobby between 12:30 and 12:45 pm. We will begin loading the bus as soon as we are able so that we can depart at 1 pm.

The bus will drop the group off at the Volstead House for a tour of the historic home with the Granite Falls Historical Society. After the tour, we will take a short walk to City Hall for a group discussion led by Museology on upcoming centennial anniversaries such as Prohibition, the Cooperative Movement, and Women's Suffrage. These extraordinary events have tremendous potential for local history organizations to development exhibits and related programming to discuss their effects within their communities. Attendees will then be returned to Marshall around 4 pm to allow folks to check into their hotels and settle in before dinner.

There is still space available for this event. To register, contact Dustin directly at (612) 500-7460. Please note, that those who choose to drive themselves to the event, will still need to pay the registration cost.

Informal Mixer at Shay's Restaurant: If you are looking to gather with your colleagues and catch-up, join us at Shay's Restaurant, directly attached to the Ramada Inn, for an informal gathering beginning at 7 pm. Enjoy dinner, drinks, and conversation to get your conference experience off on the right foot!

Wednesday, April 25

Conference location and parking: The conference will take place in the Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU) Event Center (building #13 on campus map). Parking is free in Lot A (area #37) for both days of the conference. For those staying at the Quality Inn, the Event Center is a short 10 to 15 minute walk. Anyone staying at the Ramada Inn should add about 5 minutes to that walk in order to cross Highway 19.

Registration: Registration will begin at 8:30 am outside the main ballroom on the 2nd floor of the Event Center. Each attendee will receive a name badge with lanyard and print copy of the conference program.

Sessions: Throughout the day, there will be three session tracks for each breakout slot. Sessions will begin at 9:15 am and the final set of sessions will begin at 3 pm. Descriptions of each session for this day are located on pages 6, 7, and 12.

Vendor Hall: For the first time, MALHM will be hosting a vendor hall during the conference. A total of 11 vendors (listed on page 4 of conference program) will be available to showcase their products and services to attendees on both days. The hall will be located outside the main ballroom and be open from 10:30 am to 3 pm each day.

Annual Meeting: The Annual Meeting will occur during lunch on this day. Attendees will hear updates on MALHM activities as well as elect board members. To learn more about the Annual Meeting agenda, check out pages 8 to 11.

Evening Mixer at the Lyon County Historical Society: Come to network with colleagues at the Lyon County Historical Society from 7 to 9 pm! Enjoy appetizers and drinks while you explore the museum.

Thursday, April 26

Conference location and parking: The conference will take place in the Southwest Minnesota State University (SMSU) Event Center (building #13 on campus map). Parking is free in Lot A (area #37) for both days of the conference. For those staying at the Quality Inn, the Event Center is a short 10 to 15 minute walk. Anyone staying at the Ramada Inn should add about 5 minutes to that walk in order to cross Highway 19.

Registration: Registration will begin at 8:30 am outside the main ballroom on the 2nd floor of the Event Center. Each attendee will receive a name badge with lanyard and print copy of the conference program.

Sessions: Throughout the day, there will be three session tracks for each breakout slot. Sessions will begin at 9:15 am and the final set of sessions will begin at 3 pm. Descriptions of each session for this day are located on pages 14, 15, and 18.

Vendor Hall: For the first time, MALHM will be hosting a vendor hall during the conference. A total of 11 vendors (listed on page 4 of conference program) will be available to showcase their products and services to attendees on both days. The hall will be located outside the main ballroom and be open from 10:30 am to 3 pm each day.

Joseph Amato has spent the better part of his career thinking deeply and writing about local history as a credible topic of study. He has helped create a sense of place in southwestern Minnesota, defining its boundaries, and exploring its waters and landscape. Amato has also explored the region’s culture, and its economies, and its people. Much his work has been focused on redeeming local history as a subject worthy of intellectual study. Amato’s publications explore topics as diverse as immigration and population decline, and from agriculture to murder in books such as The Decline of Rural Minnesota,Servants of the Land, When Father and Son Conspire, and The Great Jerusalem Artichoke Circus. Amato has taken on subjects as broad as walking and as minute as the history of dust. A defining book for local historians was his 2002 book, Rethinking Home: A Case for Writing Local History. Here, Amato discussed the many ways history in a locality was experienced and how it could be integrated into the greater national and international stories.

Joseph A. Amato is Professor Emeritus of History and Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest Minnesota State University. He is the principal founder of the Society for the Study of Local and Regional History, as well as the past Director for the Center for Rural and Regional Studies at Southwest State. He and his wife Cathy live near the Twin Cities and he’s currently working on a fictional mythology set along the Minnesota River.

Based on years of advanced work in European cultural history, Amato has sought fresh themes for the study of local history since his first years at Southwest Minnesota State University

While, he contends, that the local historian must acknowledge and elaborate the uniqueness and variety of place, past and present, he also argues places must be located in region, nation, and world in light of dramatically changing times.

Amato will first underline how a community of friends and a history center, and a university center for local and regional studies shaped his work.

With slides he will show how individual chap book and books shaped the work and the direction of the University of Center for the Study of Local and Regional History and the university History Center.

(Four themes that underpinned the Center and his work were the demographic transformation of the countryside; the clandestine and its changing nature; the potential use of emerging environmental history; and the irresistible subordination of everyday local life to a changing world.)

Amato will briefly conclude his talk his most recent project, Buffalo Man: Giant of the Minnesota River stressing how historical fiction can be used to transform our understanding of river-dominated Minnesota Territorial.